


Who am I?

by thesalsagamer396



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: (Again kinda), (but it's Gabriel Reyes so he isn't really dead, (kinda), Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Hurt, Hurt No Comfort, Not Beta Read, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, Very Minor Character Death, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:20:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24671452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesalsagamer396/pseuds/thesalsagamer396
Summary: Did he ever figure out who he was?
Kudos: 6





	Who am I?

**Author's Note:**

> I might have forgotten a tag or two. Let me know if you need something tagged.

_ Do you know who you are? _

**_Of course I know who I am!_ **

* * *

At age 18, he thought he had his life figured out. All his hard work would finally pay off. He worked himself to exhaustion, but it would all be worth it. Almost all straight A’s in all four of his high school years. A portfolio most artists would kill for. The support of his mother. He had all he needed. He just needed his letter of acceptance.

At age 18, Gabriel Reyes was ready to become an adult.

But at age 18, a lot had changed.

His mother passed away after fighting sickness for years, his father fell into drinking habits, his sisters moved away. He couldn’t focus on his art anymore. So much stress, and no way to take a break. By the time he got his letter of acceptance, his father had already spent all his college savings. All the money his mother and he had saved up since he was 5 had vanished from all the reckless spending his father had made to try and distract himself from his grief.

Gabriel was so lost. His life had crumbled away. He didn’t have any support left in his life. He was alone. But he had worked too hard to just give up. He had to do something with his life. All he needed was support. So like any freshly graduated kid that needed bills to be paid, he turned to the one place where he could make it.

* * *

_ Do you know who you are? _

**_I know who I’m going to be._ **

* * *

At age 23, he was dying in a cot. The bandages on his upper arm were taunting him with the residual pain of experimental concoctions pumped into his body. He hated what the bandages meant. They mocked him with his failure to follow through with his dreams. They laughed at him for what he had resorted to becoming.

A human weapon.

A weapon that didn’t tire. A weapon that didn’t need food or water or rest. A weapon that repaired itself.

A weapon with a human face.

An experiment the white coats had called “Project Death Blossom”. Some sort of gene therapy that turned a human into basically a nanobot swarm that only looks human. A black cloud of smoke that can turn into whatever it needs. They had hundreds of millions of nano-machines break down his entire body and rebuild it. For some reason, he had to be awake for the entire process. He had to experience his whole body progressively break apart and stitch itself back together. But he was fully converted.

And the white coats had accused him of being too stable.

He was pretty much deemed a failure in their books. He couldn’t maintain the nanites separately. He couldn’t make what they wanted him to make. He’d always just go back to being human. And that’s where they left him.

A façade of a human being. He looked human inside and out, but he knew. He’d always know that it’s fake. That he’s just a bunch of nanites joined together to function as a human.

For some reason, that idea hurt more than the fallout of his mother’s passing.

* * *

_ Do you know who you are? _

**_I am whoever I need to be…_ **

* * *

At age 30, Gabriel had gotten all too good and putting on masks. His missions in Blackwatch had made that a necessity. A mask for being around his friends. A mask for being around his agents. A mask for paperwork, a mask for meetings, a mask for waking up and a mask for missions. There wasn’t a single scenario in his life he didn’t have a mask for. He needed these masks. His job is full of secrets. He couldn’t leave any room for signs of weaknesses in who he was. The smallest soft spot could lead to his death. And he had people working under him whose lives were at stake. He didn’t care what people thought he was like. He needed to keep hiding behind those masks. No one could ever know him on a personal level. Not even his closest friends. It hurt to do. It hurt to keep hiding himself. It hurt so much that he had taken to wearing a mask to hide his very visible torment.

Sometimes, he’d look at his own reflection and not even recognize his own face.

It seemed like he kept switching faces as often as he switched masks.

Gabriel had wondered if he had changed. Memories of his youth taunted the bags under his eyes and the scars on his face. He used to be so optimistic and bright. He had dreams once. What happened to him? What happened to the person he used to be?

* * *

_ Do you know who you are? _

**_I thought I did…_ **

* * *

At age 51, he had died. His world literally exploded around him. Gabriel’s nanite body was struggling to maintain his human form for once. Gabriel clawed his way to a body. A body clad in striking blue. His vision was fading. His hand rested on a head of white hair that had faded from sunshine yellow. For the first time in decades, he didn’t feel hurt. He felt relief. All his masks had fallen away. He could just…be. Maybe Gabriel Reyes could finally take that break he had wanted back when he was 18. Just a short break…

* * *

_ Do you know who you are? _

**_…No…_ **

* * *

Reaper didn’t know how old he was anymore. It’s been at least 5 years since Gabriel Reyes had died, leaving Reaper to be born from the black smoke that made up his body. Reaper was now a mercenary. He killed for a job. He killed to keep his form together. He killed because he wasn’t sure what to do with himself anymore.

The doctor trying to fix him said that his condition was becoming stable.

How serendipitous…No one has accused him of that in a long time.

Nothing hurt these days. Not his body and not his mind. But his soul…Something ached in his soul.

It ached whenever he had to kill an innocent. It ached whenever he thought about his past. It ached every time he looked at his bone white mask. The owl his mask resembled taunted him. No one really knew who he was. He hated how familiar the feeling of wearing a mask felt.

He had so many secrets kept away from everyone. And if anyone got even remotely close to uncovering them, he had gotten rid of them. Both enemy and friends. He killed his enemies and pushed away his loved ones. Especially his old protégé…The kid had called him a monster before he left…

Was that who he really was? A monster? Was that how everyone saw him? Did Gabriel mean for that to happen? Was being a monster his mask? Was it even a mask in the first place? Was that just who he was? Someone that was so irredeemable, so disgusting, so vile, so inhuman?

It made sense to Reaper…It wasn’t like he was human in the first place…

* * *

_ Do you know who you are? _

**_…Who am I, again?_ **

  
  



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